


The Server Is Undergoing Maintenance

by ironfish



Category: Cookie Run (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironfish/pseuds/ironfish
Summary: GingerBrave and co find a padlock on the castle gate, and decide to try the gacha for a cookie strong enough to destroy it.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	The Server Is Undergoing Maintenance

GingerBrave and his friends had spent the morning out on adventure, and were ready to return to the castle. As the summer afternoon began edging into the sky and the temperature picked up, they couldn't wait to get under the shade of their gingerbread roofs, sit in their jelly hammocks, and enjoy a cold beverage.

However, as they arrived at the portcullis of _Custard World! Cool!! Awesome!!!_ (the unfortunate result of letting Custard III handle the kingdom registration paperwork, often colloquially shortened to CWCA), they noticed that, strangely, the gate had been closed since they left and was now fastened with a padlock.

It had never been locked before.

Above the padlock was a sign that said, "Server Closed for Maintenance."

The cookies puzzled over it for a moment, still holding the spoils of their adventures dumbly as the sun beat down on them and they waited for an explanation. Then they all spoke at once.

"Maybe one of the teapot houses is under construction," said Wizard Cookie.

"Why is it locked?" Chili Pepper scowled.

"Us... no enter?" asked Tiger Lily.

"I NEED TO GET IN I HAVE TO PEE RIGHT NOW!" screeched Angel Cookie.

"Alright, alright," GingerBrave said over the clamor. "Let's not get worked up about this. I'm sure someone will come by and help us out in a jiffy." He peered through the iron bars to see if anyone was milling around.

And indeed at that moment Adventure Cookie passed by the gates, whistling out of tune, a collection of pinecone birdies in his arms. He had been making pinecone birdies for three days now because GingerBrave was a slave driver.

"Hey! Tarzan!" Chili Pepper called out.

Addie looked up and saw the adventuring party standing outside.

"Oh. Welcome back," he said, unable to disguise the disdain in his voice. Addie resented not being chosen for expeditions, but alas, those pinecone birdies had to be made, and he was the best at it. He had made so many pinecone birdies that, in his boredom, he had begun crafting them various hats and accessories out of acorns and pine needles. He might as well be Pinecone Cookie at this point, seeing as Adventurer was not a flavor (or was it?).

He inclined his head and directed a gentle "ma'am," at Tiger Lily. Tiger Lily blinked back at him with her long lashes.

Chili Pepper scowled, adjusting the sack of crystals and cookie toppings she had slung over her shoulder like a bank robber. "What, am I not enough of a lady for ya? Whatever. Just open the stupid gate."

"Can't," replied Adventurer Cookie. "Lock's on the outside." He pondered for a moment. "Were you not the ones that locked it?"

"No," Wizard Cookie piped up. "There's a sign out here that says something about 'server maintenance,' but we don't know what that means."

"Huh. So you can't get it open?"

"No."

Adventurer mulled over this, starting to look a little nervous. "Meaning... we're all trapped inside?"

"Yes, that's about the size of it," replied Wizard Cookie.

Addie's face fell. As a result of a childhood incident during which he was stuck in his own attic for eleven hours, he had a pathological fear of enclosed spaces, the notable exception being those lined with Indiana Jones-style traps. Unfortunately his request for a giant boulder to roll around the streets at all times ("to keep the cookies on their toes!") had been denied, and at present being trapped in this space terrified him. "No, no, no," he said, his eyes widening like saucers. "We're trapped?! How am I gonna escape Blackberry?"

"Don't worry," said GingerBrave with his trademark mascot grin. He didn't have a plan, but dealing with emotions other than Brave™ was outside of his realm of expertise, and it was his compulsion, then, to discourage all non-brave sentiments immediately. "I'm sure we can find someone to help us get rid of this lock."

"Yeah, like in that brochure we got when we first started our kingdom!" said Wizard Cookie.

"Hey! Good thinking!" Ginger grinned, turning to Chili. "You hung onto it, didn't you?"

"Sure, I still got it," said Chili Pepper, the resident hoarder. She dropped her sack, likely crushing most of the topping pieces inside, and fished through her pants pockets. About a dozen gum wrappers and receipts fell onto the ground before she found the document in question, which she carefully unfolded. The others huddled around to look at it.

The pamphlet contained the names and faces of talented area cookies who could be invited to move to the CWCA hamlet. Most of the words beneath their names had faded, and the images were warped by water stains and crease marks where Chili Pepper had folded and refolded the paper, but the cookies, the ones on the Epics page especially, still looked impressive. Even their names -- Dark Choco, Madeleine, Espresso -- sounded heroic.

"These guys look powerful! I bet one of them could destroy that padlock easy," said GingerBrave. "All we have to do is ask."

To do that, as per the pamphlet's instructions, they had to visit the Gacha.

Fortunately the Gacha was on the outside of the kingdom walls, just a few minutes away. It was a ramshackle wooden booth where in exchange for the cookie world's most valuable currency, you had a one percent chance of obtaining the phone number of one of the pamphlet cookies, who could then be called to enter your service. Most of the time, though, a pull yielded only one, or two, of the twenty digits required for each cookie's phone number, with no indication of its placement. (GingerBrave, in his eternal optimism, insisted that dialing each of the 2,432,902,000,000,000,000 possible combinations of numbers was "part of the fun.")

Goblin Cookie manned the station today.

"This will go well," GingerBrave said brightly.

Between the lot of them they managed to scrape up 770 crystals and a walnut, which would net them a generous three pulls.

Goblin Cookie carefully counted his payment once, then twice, then placed the spoils somewhere under the counter for safekeeping, before he revealed the bucket of slips from which a name and number could be drawn.

Angel Cookie did the honors, picking the first slip.

"Come on, come on, come on," muttered Chili Pepper, like a good luck mantra.

"What's it say?" asked Wizard Cookie.

Angel Cookie stared at the paper blankly, their eyes narrowing in a stare that could only be described as "one or both of us is going to die." GingerBrave tried to suppress the visible shudder that ran through him at the sight of it.

"It's me," said Angel Cookie, turning the paper around to reveal a picture of their face and the number "2." "It's one twentieth of my number."

GingerBrave held up his hands defensively. "T-That's okay!" he said, trying to assume control as Angel Cookie quietly simmered with rage. "We've still got two more! Why don't you do the next one, Tiger Lily?"

Tiger Lily wordlessly stared at the plastic bucket of slips. Then she put her hand in, slowly, as though too much force would cause it to burst into flames. She did not shuffle the papers around, and instead merely selected the one sitting on top. She pulled the slip up to her face and looked at it.

"So?" Chili Pepper said impatiently.

Tiger Lily blinked. "It blank," she reported.

It was a blank slip.

Without hesitation, Chili pulled out one of her daggers and thrusted it towards Goblin Cookie. "I'll kill ya. I'll kill ya right now."

But Goblin Cookie was unphased by most weapons, as he was chased around by maces and pickaxes on the regular, so at this he only shrugged.

"Let's try the last one," said GingerBrave, increasingly losing his hold over his fellow adventurers. "I'm sure it'll be great!"

He himself picked the last one, as Chili Pepper was presently occupied and Wizard Cookie was too short to reach the counter. GingerBrave moved his hand in the jar, shuffling the papers for about a minute and a half before Goblin Cookie snapped at him to hurry up. Eventually he settled on a random slip and pulled it out, squeezing his eyes shut in nervous anticipation.

 _So this is how it all ends,_ thought GingerBrave, clutching the slip. He had imagined they would restore all the ancient kingdoms together, but instead it seemed they would be trapped outside for the rest of their days, with Angel silently melting and Tiger Lily retreating to the forest and Chili Pepper going on the run if he couldn't stop her from murdering Goblin Cookie, and all their other friends trapped inside the castle walls with the paltry decorations their F2P budget could afford and their sad collection of eleven trophies in the PVP arena.

But this was not the time to despair -- after all, his defining traits were ginger, brave, and no third thing. It was time to be brave!

"Here goes nothing!" he cried gingerbravely, wrenching his eyes open and looking down.

It was Licorice Cookie's face, along with a complete phone number.

"OLD RAGS?!" cried Chili Pepper in dismay. "You mean our only chance at getting in, the fate of our whole kingdom and _my_ treasures, rests on Old Rags Cookie?"

"Guess so," said Wizard, pulling out the bulky, ancient forest cellphone that the Sugar Gnomes had crafted for them. GingerBrave held out the card to look at as he punched the numbers in. Then Wizard Cookie pressed the button for speaker phone and held it out for everyone to listen..

The others, including Goblin Cookie a little bit, leaned forwards in anticipation as the phone rang once, twice, three times.

Four times.

Then the call went to voicemail, which announced itself with a series of mouth sounds badly imitating the crack of castle thunder, followed by what was possibly some screeching bats. "Eeeheeehee!" cried the recorded voice. "You've reached the answering machine of the EVILEST loyal servant in all of Cookie World! Please leave a message after the sound of innocent cookies crying out in terror! Also, if you're Dark Enchantress Cookie, thank you so much for calling. I am such a huge fan. I love you--"

There was a click, and then someone on the other end of the line.

"What is it?" asked a tired voice.

"Hello! This is GingerBrave!" said GingerBrave, taking charge before Chili Pepper could jump in and handle negotiations as she had done in the past. (Ginger had only barely managed to salvage the call with Addie from Chili's disastrous efforts.)

"Thisiswhaaaat? What, you calling to rub in your victory? Thanks a lot, you interrupted my power nap." He took a moment to yawn. "How did you even get this number?"

"We need your help!" replied GingerBrave, pointedly ignoring the question. "Someone locked up our castle from the outside and we need a powerful sorcerer to destroy the padlock!"

Wizard Cookie took offense to this, and the implication that his non-Epic tier magic wasn't strong enough to open a padlock, even though this was probably true.

"Oh yeah? And why should I help you kids after you _bullied_ me?" Old Rags Cookie asked the band of plucky heroes who had given him that sorry nickname. "Need I remind you we're, uh, sort of arch rivals?"

"Arch rivals?" Chili snorted. "You were like, a Level 1 boss."

"N-NO! I WAS IN WORLDS 2 AND 3 AS WELL!" he shouted back. Licorice's voice wavered, as though he was fighting tears brought on by the realization that everyone in the world made fun of him and he was not, as he had hoped, the cool dark sorcerer love interest of Dark Enchantress Cookie. "J-Just wait! I'll have a big comeback and wipe out your whole party, and... and..."

Tiger Lily's brow furrowed as she listened to the sorcerer chitter his weird excuses and picked up on the notable edge of genuine sadness in his voice. "We give... pinecone... if you help..." she said softly.

Licorice stopped. "Wha... Pinecone?"

Chili Pepper rolled her eyes. "Addie's been making weird pinecone dolls. If you move to our kingdom and help us you can probably have some. We've got millions."

GingerBrave's mouth became a taut line. "We need those for flower pots," he said sternly.

"You can even make it look like Dark Enchantress Cookie," Angel offered. Their face had returned to its usual expression of open-mouthed joy, or blank menace -- it was never clear. "Just do it. I need to go home and pee."

"W-Well," Licorice wimpered before trailing off into silence. "...Well, okay, but, only because I bet they're really bad and I want to make fun of you for them. And not for any other reason!"

The adventurers whupped in joy, and Wizard Cookie pressed the magic button used to involuntarily summon the cookie on the other end of the phone. Licorice Cookie arrived with a dramatic puff of black sugar.

"Woah. I was not ready for that." He looked around, first at Goblin Cookie and the Gacha stand, which seemed to perplex him but was an issue for another time, and then at the hamlet, which could still be spied in the distance. "So this is your stupid little kingdom, huh?" he asked, though without as much venom in his voice as he might have hoped. "Hmmph. It's stupid." Nailed it, Rags.

When they returned to the gate, Adventurer Cookie was on the ground, trembling slightly but otherwise catatonic in fear, with his pinecone dolls spilled all over the ground in front of him. Blackberry stood, holding a purple parasol to cast a shadow over Addie so he would not suffer from heat stroke.

"You have returned," said Blackberry in her level voice. "I hope you have found a way to remove the lock. I worry the master may not be able to hold out much longer."

Licorice leaned over to whisper to GingerBrave. "Who is that?" he asked.

"That's Blackberry," answered GingerBrave at normal volume. "Okay Licorice, do your stuff!"

Licorice hoisted his magical scythe and walked forward to inspect the lock more closely. "What's this? 'Server Maintenance?'" he read with obvious scorn. "Dunno what that is, but it's no match for me. Watch and learn, kids." Chili Pepper was clearly unimpressed. GingerBrave had no concept of "cool" versus "uncool," and the others remained impassive and inpenetrable, but he wanted to make this Blackberry, whoever she was, think he was a cool dude, because she was a pretty lady and dressed in a somewhat villainous palette.

With a theatrical flourish and a cry in his ancient cookie tongue (Korean), Rags summoned a bolt of lightning which zapped away the padlock and also boosted his defense. He coolly pried the gates open, to joyful hollers from the team, and stepped inside the hamlet, blowing his sticky candy bangs out of his eyes as he strutted before Blackberry Cookie.

"See? I'm the most powerful dark servant in the world," he announced, as though she had asked or expressed any interest in him whatsoever.

The others rushed inside and began to disperse.

"You should come on down to the Soup Store!" GingerBrave said cheerfully. "I'll introduce you to everyone!" They had one restaurant, bar, and tavern in CWCA, and it was called the Soup Store.

"I haven't decided if I'm staying yet," Licorice responded, rolling his eyes.

But as Chili Pepper walked past him, headed for the castle treasury, he stooped down to pick up a pinecone birdie. "Wait, are these the dolls?" he asked her.

"Yep, take as many as you want," she called over her shoulder. "Thanks again, Rags."

He studied the pinecone in his hand.

 _Oh no!_ he thought in panic. _They're adorable!_

This was translated as, "hmmph, they're not terrible, I guess." He said this out loud, though everyone except Blackberry and Adventurer had now gone.

Licorice pocketed the pinecone birdie and wandered off in the direction GingerBrave had gone, hatching new and insidious plans of how he would decorate it to look like a miniature Dark Enchantress Cookie.

"Wait..." Adventurer Cookie called after him, still weakened and lying on the ground from fear and sun exhaustion. "I need those for the train... Come back..."

The rest of the day passed peacefully, and while they were unable to move any buildings, collect any crafted objects, battle, level up, or complete any other objectives owing to the continued maintenance of the server (whatever that was), Addie at least got to go outside and Angel Cookie got to pee.

**Author's Note:**

> Addie is my fav don't at me


End file.
